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Nov 30 2015

# London Grip New Poetry – Winter 2015/6

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This issue of London Grip New Poetry features new poems by:

*Tim Youngs *Kerrin P Sharpe *Richie McCaffery *Abegail Morley *Nadine Brummer *Patrick Wright *William Oxley *Tim Love *Peter Daniels *Teoti Jardine
*J ‘Ash’ Gamble *Oliver Comins *Caroline Davies
*David Perman *Murray Bodo *Caroline Maldonado *Brian Docherty
*Jane Henderson *Wendy French *Sarah James *Ray Miller *Marilyn Ricci
*Alison Hill *Gareth Culshaw *Deeptesh Sen *Stephen Claughton
*P W Bridgman *Stuart Handysides *George Freek

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors

A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry resides at LG new poetry Winter 2015-6

Please send submissions to poetry@londongrip.co.uk (no more than three poems & a brief biography)

From the Editor

Craigie Aitchison – Washing Line at Montecastelli

What are we waiting for?

The whole creation is on tiptoe to see the wonderful sight
of the sons of God coming into their own – Rom 8:19
J.B. Phillips translation

    We regularly celebrate
    the story of an end to waiting
    scarcely more than two took part in.
    None bar prophets saw it coming.

    But what we haven’t settled is who else
    must visit what fresh Bethlehem; and when
    a burst of star-shaped news will overtake
    whichever shepherds, kings or tradesmen
    happen to be hanging round;

                                              and why
    on tiptoe is a better way to wait
    than playing with the condiments
    in a cheap short-order diner
    with all choices on or off the menu
    turning bad for lack of salt.

    .
    .

Themes in this issue of LG New Poetry are mostly rather sombre for what is often termed the festive season; and the above poem (which comes with Christmas greetings from your editor) contains the only Advent/Nativity reference. Other religious associations do occur in the opening few poems but these are of a darker nature. Tim Youngs offers a response to a painting (by an unknown artist) of the martyrdom of St Ursula; and Kerrin P Sharpe’s poem motivates our heading picture which is one of Craigie Aitchison’s understated images of the Cross in the midst of the ordinary. Subsequent poems deal, among other things, with loss, mourning & ghostly reappearances; echoes of war; artists & their colours and small domestic memories. We hope our readers will enjoy the resulting poetic mixture.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/

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Tim Youngs: Les archers décochant leurs flèches

    Huddled at the border of their state
    pikes erect, arrows fingered for discharge,
    the men stake Ursula and her virgins
    whose fate, beyond the frame, is known to us
    though unseen. This medieval painting’s still
    alive with the presence of the men who kill.

.

Tim Youngs‘s poetry has appeared in, among other places, The Harlequin, Hinterland, The Interpreter’s House, Lighthouse, The Nightwatchman: The Wisden Cricket Quarterly, Prole, Staple, The Stare’s Nest and Ink, Sweat and Tears. He is Professor of English at Nottingham Trent University and the author or editor of several books on travel writing.

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Kerrin P. Sharpe: what was going on was the Cross

    at school I drew cross
    after finger-spaced cross
    and learnt to carry
    the places I left

    	+

    one Good Friday when the Priest
    raised the Cross
    Jesus walked off

    	+

    my father was buried
    with his rosary
    the silver cross hugged
    his thin fingers like a lever
    the small crosses on his coffin
    hid the nails

    	+

    once my son banged his head
    on a cross that like
    a retractor held the wound open
    I saw his heart

    	+

    after the earthquake
    a man built 12 crosses
    from the wood of dead churches
    they moved the wind like hair

Kerrin P. Sharpe’s third poetry collection rabbit rabbit will be published by Victoria University Press (NZ) in July 2016. A selection of her work has also appeared in Oxford Poets 2013 (Carcanet). Her first two poetry collections were three days in a wishing well (2012) and there’s a medical name for this (2014).

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Richie McCaffery: Church

    As a child I was horrified when my mother
    told me God did not exist. She said
    in time I would come to understand.

    Now I understand only too well,
    but on summer days like these I could
    almost be cozened back to the flock –

    how dark and damp this church is,
    yet still the pews are faded by sun.

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Richie McCaffery: Train to Edinburgh

    I sit with a coffee on a pull-out table,
    the window reflection doubles everything –
    two cups yet you are not here,
    double quick my heart-rate and breathing.

    I do not seem to be so easily cloned,
    hardly made double the man I am, or was.
    In fact, I look haunted by myself,
    this ghostly mist around my edges.

Richie McCaffery (b.1986) recently completed a Carnegie Trust funded PhD on the Scottish poets of World War Two, at the University of Glasgow. He now lives in Ostend, Belgium. He is the author of Spinning Plates (2012), the 2014 Callum Macdonald Memorial Pamphlet Award runner-up, Ballast Flint and the book-length collection Cairn from Nine Arches Press, 2014. Another pamphlet, provisionally entitled Arris, is forthcoming in 2017. He is also the editor of Finishing the Picture: The Collected Poems of Ian Abbot (Kennedy and Boyd, 2015)

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Abegail Morley: Presence

    No one saw the hollow in the bar stool,
    or the breath collapsing on the window
    or felt the shift in the air as you passed –
    a starched whisper hurrying to the door.

    No one knew how far you walked down
    Western Road, thoughts slack as rope.
    We didn’t know how drunk you were
    at St Peter’s Bridge standing on the edge

    as if looking at yourself in a long mirror.
    No one heard the things you said weeks before,
    considered your walks, at night ? alone.
    We were home when you climbed railings,

    searched the empty sky, its unspoken words
    smoothed by the wind. When you stepped off
    you didn’t know someone felt your small life
    heat their skin, if only for a moment.

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Abegail Morley: B1077

    We spent the afternoon at a watermill outside Easton,
    watched it turn for a time, then willed it to stop – like pain,
    noticed how the trees had tipped their branches
    leftwards as if to let the wind through.

    It happened in Cookley. Your voice on the phone
    stretches down the line. I think of an asthma attack,
    a hospital, but that isn’t it you say. You insist
    it’s a collision on a B road, her 4x4 hit head on,

    how a woman had stopped and held her.
    At the funeral three weeks from now her mother
    will tell me that there wasn’t a mark on her,
    how she looked like Princess Diana. But now

    I don’t know that, just know your voice journeys
    through wires to reach me, stutters along cables
    overhead as if you control the skies, the birds
    and the welcome rain that clears the air.

Abegail Morley’s debut collection, How to Pour Madness into a Teacup (Cinnamon 2009) was shortlisted for the Forward Prize Best First Collection (2010). Her collections, Snow Child (2011) and Eva and George: Sketches in Pen and Brush (2013) are published by Pindrop Press. Indigo Dreams Publishing brought out her pamphlet, The Memory of Water this year and The Skin Diary is forthcoming from Nine Arches Press (spring 2016). She collaborates with artists on a number of ekphrastic projects including work with the Royal Academy and The British Library and is currently Poet in Residence at Riverhill Himalayan Gardens in Kent.

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Nadine Brummer: Missing

    It’s easy to misrecognise
    loved ones, friends, family
    dead and gone – our eyes

    deceived by turn of head,
    a stranger’s body-shape,
    or his/her hair parted

    just so – in the street
    we call a name and are ignored
    or else, astonished, meet

    incomprehension, a look
    that hurts by its unknowing.
    The dead do not come back –

    not the  cat
    who’d followed us around
    for years, though cat-flap,

    unused, rattles now and then
    or paws and tail flash by
    as if our once companion

    is palpably there.
    It’s in the thereness
    that love inheres,

    the presence of another
    holding, held, holding on,
    relic, perhaps, of mothering,

    parenting that assumes
    a different guise in nurture
    of animal or human.

    And those off-guard mistakes
    of face or sound are gifts –
    there is a hint in double-takes

    the dead are everywhere
    like wind, they are the breath
    we breathe, they are our atmosphere.

Nadine Brummer has had three collections published with Shoestring Press: Half Way To Madrid (2002, PBS Recommendation), Out of the Blue (2006) and Any Particular Day (2013)

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Patrick Wright: Ghost Story

It arrives in strips torn out of a compendium of dreams. It begins as wisteria
up the walls a boarded-up window a gable another window dark as
an eye-patch. It’s something I’ve meant to write for some time. Each night
another vignette is unveiled. as if viewing a mural by torchlight. It’s always a
darkness beyond darkness like once in the attic with a shade no photons could
escape or where such darkness festers in oubliettes undercrofts outside
with rooks and a sense of the venerable. Often it’s a house I’ve once been in
one with a tumble-down facade sheer cliffs on every side. Last night the
house of a married couple or mausoleum its door-turned-tombstone carved
in exotic ciphers. I chucked a grappling hook over the roof to the other side
hoisted myself through a spider-filled frame. All I remember was a presence of
husband and wife how I kept opening doors to bedrooms or staircases or
doubling back on myself finding rooms were running out or floral walls
closing in. Shut in the vestibule I sought the bustle of the streets. Shrieks out
of a letterbox met with nothing but disinterest.

Patrick Wright was born in Manchester in 1979 and completed a PhD in English at the University of Manchester. In 2014 Wright graduated with an MA (Distinction) in poetry from the same university. He has been shortlisted for the 2015 Bridport Prize, and poems from his pamphlet Nullaby have been published in several magazines, including Agenda and Allegro. He is a Lecturer at The Open University and teaches Creative Writing.

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William Oxley: Interlocking Worlds

Light and shade effects rivaling those of the greatest English poets … V. Nabakov.

    Noon shifts itself down Keats’ Grove,
    comes to rest under historic oaks, chestnuts
    by South Hill Ponds.  Sky peers
    between floppy-haired trees, sees
    its own cloud-gaze in motionless water.

    A figure stands in rippling shade.  Young
    and nonchalant, his face catches
    the passing glitter of up-struck light
    from the pond’s surface.  Then watching
    a fat mallard disturb its watery patch

    he sees the sun’s emissaries
    dancing with delicious water nymphs,
    feels he has looked right to the edge of things,
    glimpsed imagination’s interlocking worlds
    that light and shade effects reveal ?
    feels he has witnessed oh-so-much.

    In fact, he has seen poetry in action
    			and inaction:
    grasped for a moment the meaning of light
    that is the honey of being
    and the shade that is its undoing.

William Oxley‘s New and Collected Poems was reviewed in London Grip in 2014. A pamphlet, Walking Sequence and other poems, has just appeared from Indigo Dreams Publishing.

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Tim Love: Mousetraps

    Before you go, we trawl charity shops,
    buy all the Mousetrap games and fill the floor
    with one long chain of consequences.

    We don't need the instructions to part as friends.

    Our rule's to keep the small talk rumbling
    like a cement lorry or a shark flapping
    in its sleep so water's flowing over its gills.
    Jaws. Film sequels, how Puzo
    based the Godfather on his mother,
    the different types of pasta – butterflies,
    radiators, flying saucers.

                                            I'm getting hungry now.
    You can find the speed of light by microwaving
    a pizza. Trouble is, you have to keep it still
    so you can measure between the melted stripes.
    The formula's simple but I can't remember it.
    Amazing how few parts were missing wasn't it?
    Enough though.
    Silence.
    Points off for silence.

    You go to the toilet. I hear the front door slam.
    Easier this way. The least I can do
    is make some complete sets and take them back,
    throw in some spare elastic bands.

Tim Love’s publications are a poetry pamphlet Moving Parts (HappenStance, 2010) and a story collection By all means (Nine Arches Press, 2012). He lives in Cambridge, UK. His poetry and prose have appeared in Stand, Rialto, Oxford Poetry, Journal of Microliterature, Short Fiction, etc. He blogs at http://litrefs.blogspot.com/

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Peter Daniels: Greenwich

    Stretched up the sky like a heap of scribble,
    the rigging can’t surely have kept a ship pushing
    on the wind over the waves, but it’s there
    and it did. With people who know and tell you
    all the names of the ropes, it’s just as alarming
    and no, you’d never get me up there. Yet I live
    as if I knew one day they’d yank me
    out of my tavern seat and give me the whole
    world tour, for a very long time – and how
    shall I get by, and suppose they take me
    somewhere I never come back from?
    I don’t suppose I’ll ever get used to it.

    I’m sitting in a garden picking my
    smallpox scabs till they bleed, thinking
    of nothing. A messenger arrives
    and I’m distracted by his codpiece
    but he draws my attention to the letter
    that calls me before the king. I wonder
    what he wants me for, as I pack my best
    which is not very fine but will have to do,
    and the messenger is trotting off to visit
    the next on the list. I expect
    this will be changing my life.
    I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it.

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Peter Daniels: The End of the Street

    Leave forever, dump the street like an old coat:
    had enough of bent lamp posts, and faded signs
    painted on the sides of old houses.
    Old friends, like cigarette butts that got you through,
    but only till you lit the next.
    Even the buses are old, and don't go where you want to.
    It's been home too long: every brick and paving stone
    says go away, the place has had enough of you, too.
    Put them behind you, take the other end of the street

    wherever it goes. The old district won't ever sit up again.
    It's too old to get through, clutching its cornices,
    its ornamented mantelpieces, never knew different.
    Leave it to mad people, to the hopeless,
    to fanatics for their hideout.
    If you come back, come back to flatten it, build new towers
    for the people who look to the sky. When you're rid
    of the old quaint neighbourhood, why should the future
    even thank you – let it speed away.

Peter Daniels has won several competitions including the Arvon, Ledbury and TLS. He has published pamphlets including the obscene historical Ballad of Captain Rigby, the full collection Counting Eggs (2012), and translations of Vladislav Khodasevich from Russian (2013).

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Teoti Jardine : Moving

    The room is open, warm and sunny,
    glass doors display the garden clearly.
    Amie’s kennel looks at home there,
    and my writing room is just next door.

    Glass doors display the garden clearly,
    I’m hoping we’ll be happy here.
    My writing room is just next door,
    the window sees the sea breeze blowing.

    I’m hoping we’ll be happy here,
    our third move, in as many months.
    The window sees the sea breeze blowing,
    through the dunes along the beach.

    Our third move in as many months,
    yet, this one feels like coming home.
    Through the dunes, along the beach,
    she chases, while I walk on waves.

    Now I feel I’ve found my home here,
    his handshake warm and welcoming.
    She’s chases while we’re walking waves
    that seek to settle in the sand.

    Handshake warm and welcoming
    his stories ride the waves ashore.
    They whisper as they find their
    settling, telling me to look no more.

    The room is open, warm and sunny,
    sheltered by the garden’s wall,
    Amie’s kennel looks at home there,
    my longing place has found me.

Teoti Jardine is of Maori, Irish and Scottish decent. His tribal affiliations are: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011. His poetry has been published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, and JAAM. He has short stories published in Flash Frontier, and Te Karak. He reads at Catalyst ‘Open Mic’ sessions. He is member of the Canterbury Poets Collective Committee, and reads at their Springtime Sessions. He is member of the Kai Tahu Writers Whanau. He and his dog Amie live in a beautiful old house in the Linwood suburb of Christchurch.

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J ‘Ash’ Gamble: Routines

    there are carved ruts
    for us called routines so
    that we do not forget
    what we are about,
    hell, we could die and not
    stop this routine until
    at least two days later

J ‘Ash’ Gamble is a late in life poet from Florida. His poetry currently appears in Dead Snakes, The Poet Community, and Ancient Hearts Magazine

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Oliver Comins: Fishponds (3rd Hole, 185 yards)

    Distance is not the problem.
    Something else is.  It begins
    with tension, created by a pond
    on each side and a monstrous bunker
    gaping behind the green.

    How the wind blows can amplify
    the effect, while pin position
    varies the degree of threat
    to the well-being of your shot –
    between very high risk of calamity
    and inevitable disaster.

    Finally, there is the moment
    your routine starts –
    the flex and grip, you turn
    your hips and hands in tight unison,
    followed by a splash.
    The sound of something entering
    water or leaving it behind.

Oliver Comins lives and works in West London. A short collection (Yes to Everything) published in February has been followed by a slightly longer collection, Staying in Touch, which won a Templar Pamphlet Award and was published in November.

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Caroline Davies: What Louis Doffman knows

    What Louis Doffman knows

    That his father is foreign.
    That being sent to the front
    is a strange kind of homecoming

    That he loves being with the rest of the lads
    who have him figured out as one of them,
    have shortened his surname to Monty.

    That he chose Mountford
    for its English ring.
    That he has lied in his letters home.

    That he is afraid. That he can sense his blood
    and it thuds in his ears
    as the artillery booms.

    That he has no faith in the advancing barrage
    going ahead across open ground
    to destroy the enemy.

    That he does not know how he will kill
    when he gets into the German lines.
    That he hopes they will all surrender.

    That his company must advance towards the sunken road,
    they’ve nicknamed Gloucester Street.
    That there are lots of enemy machine guns.

    That as he climbs out of the trench
    with the rest of the lads
    he feels lifted up as if by angels.

In memory of the 228 men, including Louis Doffman (who served as Lewis Mountford) of the Second Battalion, Worcester Regiment, killed in Pigeon Ravine, 29th September 1918

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Caroline Davies: One of the Honeybills

    It must have been taken in 1917.
    The photographer has chosen a mottled background
    reminiscent of rain and clouds.
    Nothing detracts from your white sergeant’s stripes.
    Your eyes are like my grandfather’s and you have his way
    of gazing past the photographer as if
    you can see into the future.

    I see you, Percy Honeybill, but you could never imagine
    someone would come a century on
    to send your grandson into the attic
    where he will find your diary and the jotted notes in the back.
    Joined up Dec 1st 1916
    Sent to Prees Dec 11th 1916
    and the careful details during 1917
    of promotion
    to lance corporal
    to lance sergeant.
    There are no entries after September 1918.

    So much is missing; the rest of your life
    and even your body.
    But in this photograph you do look happy.

Caroline Davies’ Voices from Stone and Bronze will be forthcoming from Cinnamon Press in 2016. Her first collection, Convoy, based on the experiences of her merchant seaman grandfather was published in 2013. She blogs occasionally atadvancingpoetry.blogspot.com

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David Perman: The Skylark

    It might as well have had no body
    like Shelley’s blithe spirit, for as
    a child I never saw or heard a skylark.
    They did not chirrup above the London traffic
    or hover over our soot-sown park.

    I first heard one on a firing range
    where we aimed at plywood men
    with unwieldy bren or stuttering sten
    and there it was in the lull – of guns and
    sergeant’s shouts – a trill as high as cirrus.

    Vaughan Williams too was thinking of guns
    as he watched soldiers leave for France
    and sketched as the theme of The Lark
    Ascending, the spirit of its agitated call
    without the endless repetition – of bird or guns.

    Now it’s only you that hears one:
    “There’s a lark up there somewhere.”
    I strain eyes along your extended arm –
    in vain. But bless you, VW, for the compensation
    of your music for the bird now to me silent.

David Perman was born in Islington but now lives in Ware. He has had three collections published, the latest Scrap-Iron Words (2014) from Acumen Publications. He is the publisher of Rockingham Press.

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Murray Bodo: Skirl of the World

    The shooter then shoots himself
    These quick kills so many – my
    country why don’t you hear their
    cry, skirl of the world of guns

    The theater I loved as
    a child cave noir but safe
    Now rank blood scuds into
    my fading celluloid dreams

    A flurry of talking heads
    who could have stilled the easy
    staccato of what they said
    was defending their country

    Instead a gothic film squall
    suddenly lights up the screen
    A turbulent tide’s loud with
    skirls of more than many gulls

Murray Bodo is a Franciscan Priest and Poet. His most recent book of poetry is Autumn Train, 2015. Fr. Murray resides in inner-city Cincinnati, Ohio, and spends two months of the year in Rome and Assisi, Italy, as a staff member of “Franciscan Pilgrimage Programs.” He is presently working on a memoir, Gathering Shards: A Franciscan Life.

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Caroline Maldonado: After the cease-fire

    What can I say to Kostya
    when he comes to paint my kitchen,
    his son living in Debaltseve
    right near the border,
    third child on the way
    and their neighbours
    loading carts ready for flight?

    All night the leaders met together.
    They may have reached an accord
    though soldiers and rebels
    still shell homes to rubble.
    Once they start it’s hard to stop.

    The leaders’ eyes are blood-shot,
    can a cease-fire hold?
    Black’s a colour to go with red.

Caroline Maldonado’s pamphlet What they say in Avenale has been published by Indigo Dreams Publishing (2014). She co-translated, together with Allen Prowle, poems by the Southern Italian poet, Rocco Scotellaro, in Your call keeps us awake published by Smokestack Books (2013).

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Brian Docherty: How Love Comes Out Of Our Pens

    It comes out thick & black
    like our heart’s blood after
    our mouth has dried up at last

    or a blue of the state flower
    in a country we have never visited
    and seen only occasionally on TV

    or the purple of a sunset
    where Clark Gable is always young
    and the music is Art Deco

    but if it flows thick & green
    that might be a fine madness
    or our lizard brain waking up

    and a fine yellow line is not
    something we would put our name to
    unless we were a visiting alien

    while brown is that old Country
    favourite,  faded love, something
    that was black or blue, but still true;

    now red, a strong, unbroken line
    of scarlet; we know what that is,
    we are all Robert Burns for a day

    and while we can hold a pen and hold
    our thought, love comes out, if true,
    without hesitation, repetition or deviation.

Brian Docherty was born in Glasgow, now lives in north London; 4 books published, including Independence Day, ( Penniless Press, 2015).

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***

Jane Henderson: Portrait of Francis Bacon at Reece Mews

    Shot in his own studio
    an expression of mild surprise
    he presides among the debris
    sleeves rolled up as if fresh from combat
    exposing the meat of his forearms.
    Stilled in this cadmium aftermath
    just the ticking of his wristwatch
    over-rides the turpentine silence.
    Visibly he is unscarred:
    eyes like flints in that avian head,
    hair slicked back with forelock.
    Behind him the tainted mirror
    never reflects an undistorted image.

Jane Henderson is a gardener and sculptor. She is a regular reader of her poetry at venues in Sudbury and Bury St Edmunds

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***

Wendy French: Cancer Speaks of Painting a Garden

Teenage and Young People’s Centre, Macmillan

    time then to escape to the garden
    where palette colours change the season
    on this huge expanse of paper

    but I remain fairly constant
    don’t always like what I do, the pain
    I cause, Shit, the young girl says

    as she throws down her brush –
    a heron painted,
    ready for flight, and the girl sketched

    reading her book never turns a page.
    Stories emerge in the head of the girl
    yelling Shit, shit and more of it

    the ornate gate opens and closes
    in between blood tests, weight checks
    but I’m there, hovering over this garden

    for it promises some certainty.
    Uncertainty. It’s never night here
    stars are blind, they wait

    children make their own light, mix paints
    the fern stays yellow
    my colours change with intensity

    I have no place in this garden
    minnows swim round and round
    In between blood tests and appointments

    another colour’s added to the garden,
    a haiku written, a text received and sent,
    while parents sit, clutch letters.

    In this expansive painting
    with the hint of grey, stickle-backs
    swim and the swan’s neck stretches

    I want to be a wall in that garden.
    Strong, dry, stone. Stone upon stone.
    A wall that won’t crack in the cold.

    Borders wander through
    children’s medication.
    One path leads to another

    through toxic pollen lilies.
    A felted blackbird
    with a bright orange eye.

Wendy French has just finished a Poet in Residency at the Macmillan Cancer Centre, UCLH. She is currently working on poems to reflect on this residency and the vulnerability of us all.

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***

Sarah James: Thick-skinned, Thin-fleshed

on diabetes type 1

     In the old young days: piss
    	on diastix, and a glass syringe
    twice the length of her palm.

    On the children’s ward, she practised
    	on thick oranges. Pushing a needle
    through the fruit’s peel was so

    unlike the ice-cold sting
    	of pressing it through her own
    thin-fleshed skin, the weight

    of glass in her hand, pushing
    	the plunger home. This sterilised
    in her Mum’s special saucepan,

    while she played houses, and childhood.
    	Later, lighter plastic for injections,
    then a cannula and pump.

    Blood tests now, for precision.
    	Fingertips pricked to a scarred
    numbness. For thirty-five years,

    the red of life with a glint of steel.
    	Each needle’s slither etches
    her mind; her body’s rubbed hard

    by time. She carries the disease’s
    	sharp sweetness in her blood;
    its other daily stabs as invisible

    as genetics. Look! She shows me
    	her fingers’ scabby black braille,
    soaked in manmade insulin.

    Her wet dependence is survival.

Sarah James’ latest collections are The Magnetic Diaries (Knives, Forks and Spoons Press), a narrative in poems, and plenty-fish from Nine Arches Press. The Oxford University modern languages graduate was winner of the Overton Poetry Prize 2015 and a poem from The Magnetic Diaries was highly commended in this year’s Forward Prizes. Her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk and she runs the small poetry imprint, V. Press.

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***

Ray Miller: Looking After You

    The stabilisers are squeaking and your head is still
    too tiny for your helmet. We’re taking aim
    at August and the cycle turns as clockwork
    as a comet. Your new parents have got previous
    experience of death, disease and sickness;
    but they haven’t got dogs, frogs in a pond
    or slow-worms on the top of the compost.
    I’m looking after you – to when I’m stationed
    at the wrong end of a spyglass, when the shed
    is cleared of a pink car and scooters,
    and Cinderella hasn’t left behind her slippers;
    when the time strikes for writing rhyme and rhythm,
    not dwelling on the dreams of orphaned children;
    to when I stare at all this empty space and wonder
    if it’s appropriate to watch Rastamouse alone.

Ray Miller has had poems published in many magazines. He won the Inter Board Poetry Contest in September 2013 and finished 3rd in the 100 metres sprint at Trescott Junior School in 1965. These days he can only walk as far as the bookies and back.

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***

Marilyn Ricci: Night Rider

    The steady shush of his bicycle wheel
    with its mudguard bent a little too close;
    I push back the duvet, look out to see
    in flickering streetlamp my father coast
    by, flap of his raincoat, framed eyes squint,
    pushed along by an unearthly wind,
    bike clips glint, like he’s in an old movie
    and when I wave he salutes his trilby.
    There’s that ghost of a smile as he pedals
    away, not looking back, determined, grim.
    Thirty years dead I wish he would settle,
    be at peace with himself, make that old frame
    stop dead in its tracks, sins forgiven,
    let blessed mortality finally reign.

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***

Marilyn Ricci: The Way Things Often Go

    Six a.m. and he’s sweeping up after the night shift,
    thinking of his finger tracing high cheekbones, warm lips,
    hands running through her brown curls
    at the bus stop next to the Palais de Danse.

    God knows it’s been a hard walk against the wind
    since that first shy meeting: sucking a mint to hide beery
    breath, holding open the door, the apple smell of her perfume
    as she high-heels onto red carpet covered in dead ends,
    plaster cupids looking down on them.

    Later, he wants another drink, she’s a little edgy.
    The last bus still half an hour away they linger
    in the smell of frying chips, joke with the old man
    behind the counter, stroll towards the stop, sharing
    the chips, the vinegar soaking the paper apart.
    He goes to kiss her. She flashes: Not yet. Pushes him.

    It’s an old story, he thinks: early whiffs of fatal flaws –
    his drinking, her temper – the inevitable cracks, split.
    But it wasn’t like that.

    He has loved her and, he thinks, she has loved him and that endured
    through the kids, the arguing, his drinking, her temper, the lack
    of jobs, the constant worry about paying the rent.

    It’s an old story about dead ends, plaster cupids, chips, vinegar and love.
    An old story about the way things often go.

Marilyn Ricci lives in Leicestershire. Her work has appeared in several anthologies and many magazines including Magma, The Rialto and Modern Poetry In Translation. Her pamphlet: Rebuilding a Number 39 was published by Happenstance Press.

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***

Alison Hill: Brooklands Swing

    They’re in the mood – swirling
    the dance floor, hands skimming
    hips, scarlet lipstick glossing, all
    eye-linered nylons & vintage chic.

    They’re hovering at the stalls,
    clustering rails, rummaging
    period pieces, yellowing maps
    offering up roads still to travel.

    From the clubhouse balcony
    classic cars slip into easy mono,
    as Diana wafts by, Lettice strides
    the other way, ready for the sky.

    Spring sunlight dances back into
    Brooklands, crowds lap nostalgia,
    the glitz & glamour of bygone days
    cheering races, applauding flights.

Alison Hill has published two collections, Peppercorn Rent (Flarestack, 2008) and Slate Rising (Indigo Dreams, 2014). She founded the reading series Rhythm & Muse and was Kingston Libraries’ first Poet in Residence (2011/12). Sisters in Spitfires, from which this poem is taken, was published in October by Indigo Dreams. This collection arises from research into the women who flew with the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) in World War II, focusing on their role in the war and their love of the Spitfire in particular, and is supported by the Arts Council

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***

Gareth Culshaw: Dress

    She is making a dress, shaping fabric
    around herself. The snip snip of scissors
    snapping the threads of a sheet.

    A coloured sheet that will envelop her
    body. A curve under each arm, a straight
    down each side. Under stitching and
    using a machine. The chugging tap, tap, tap

    of getting the stitching right, straight.
    She is making a dress, using inches,
    pin and fit to keep things together.

    Seams tidied to give a finished look
    she is also making herself look new
    knowing what fingertips have touched
    the inner parts. Chugging tap, tap, tap

    snip snip of scissors. Occasional ironing out
    pins sit in a small pillow on the table
    coloured heads, sharp points, waiting to
    swim under a piece of fabric and lie in wait.

Gareth Culshaw is an aspiring writer who has had poems published in various magazines and online journals. He hopes one day to achieve something special with the pen. He lives in North Wales

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***

Deeptesh Sen: Scrambled eggs

    hair tied up
    you were cooking scrambled eggs
    for dinner

    your wrinkled face
    buried in solitude
    threw up the ghosts on arched windows

    past continuous
    as the yolk sizzling in oil
    spluttered out

    and you stood
    sucking your thumb

    there are no ghosts,
    you had told me once
    only accidents that stop short of being a miracle

    the persistence of your body
    rising, falling
    with breath
    was a miracle back then

    the casual glance of accidental unease
    caught me off-guard
    and left a winding trail

    now the heat receding
    winter having shrunk in,
    there are no more accidents

    unpaid kerosene bills and metacin tablets
    jostle for space with noisy children

    even the old photos
    cling to the wall like strangers
    dissipating rheumatic memory

    don’t tell me death is better
    not even the moth that dances on fire
    can afford such a brittle supposition

    the spluttering of the yolk now
    opens up a dangerous precipice —

    the brittle skin of the night
    flaking off
    into a mechanical lump of flesh

    some nights are beautiful
    when we don’t make love

Deeptesh Sen is currently pursuing his M.Phil. in English at Jadavpur University, Kolkata. His poetry has been published in The Statesman, Kolkata, the Journal of Poetry Society, India, Aaina Nagar, the Stare’s Nest and Crab Fat Literary Magazine. He blogs at www.deeptesh.net

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***

Stephen Claughton: In the Restaurant

    If Dad were here now,
    he’d be flirting with the staff,
    archly raising one eyebrow
    to indicate mild surprise,

    the mimed equivalent
    of some corny chat-up line,
    beginning perhaps with:
    “What’s a dish like you...?”

    The waitresses, well trained
    and used to that sort of thing,
    didn’t seem to care.
    I’d be the one going red,

    digging my heels in hard
    under the restaurant table,
    sticking my head in the menu
    and mumbling my order to them.

    When it came to getting the bill,
    Dad would crook an eyebrow again
    and give the lop-sided grin
    he called  ‘a winning smile’.

    It seemed to work for him.
    Maybe he had the knack,
    unless the knowing girls
    just humoured him for tips.

    I stick with the standard gesture,
    miming – I’m not sure which –
    their writing me the ‘check’,
    or my signing a cheque to them.

    In practice, we do neither.
    Perhaps I’m just drawing a line,
    a limit to everything:
    the meal, the evening, Dad.

Stephen Claughton’s poems have appeared in print in Agenda, The Interpreter’s House, Iota, Other Poetry, Poetry Salzburg Review and The Warwick Review and on line at Agenda Supplement, Ink Sweat & Tears, London Grip and The Poetry Shed.

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***

P W Bridgman: The Nobility In That, Or Not

     Helen, a twelfth grader, would have done it with him,
        an eleventh grader,
            but his best friend advised against it.
                (Not fair to Pam.)

    Pam, his Pam, wouldn’t have.
         (No need even to ask.)

    Helen would have,
        but he thought he shouldn’t
            because, in truth,
                though he won’t admit it,
                    he feared he couldn’t.

    There’s no nobility in that.

    For greater certainty:
    Helen would have, as might he,
        but they didn’t,
            because he wouldn’t
                out of a fear he couldn’t.

    Then came Pam’s change of heart: she would.

    He still feared he couldn’t,
        still thought they shouldn’t,
            but as it happens,
                he could,
                    and they did,
                        and straightaway he wished they hadn’t.

    By then, Helen wouldn’t.
    And while his Pam would,
        and though he knew they could,
            he wouldn’t,
                because she wasn’t … you know … Helen.

    Ever since, though he could have,
       and with many,
            he hasn’t.
                And he won’t.

    And he thinks there’s nobility in that.

P.W. Bridgman writes short fiction and poetry from Vancouver, Canada. His work has appeared in numerous literary magazines and in anthologies that have been published (or are soon to be published) in Canada, England, Scotland, Ireland and India. His first book of fiction, entitled Standing at an Angle to My Age, was published by Libros Libertad in 2013. You can learn more about his work by visiting his website at www.pwbridgman.ca.

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***

Stuart Handysides: All an act

    This is a rehearsal; I am rehearsing,
    like changing vehicles on the way to my funeral.
    The actor pauses to corpse.

    Perhaps too early in the piece’s evolution
    to call it rehearsal, too much yet to do –
    build character, develop text, block moves.

    This is workshopping, storming the brain,
    creeping up on it to see what’s going on,
    where it’s got to, where it’s going, if it knows.

    This is a rehearsal. Don’t believe those
    who say life isn’t, because it is.
    The best you could say is, ‘work in progress’.

    Make no mistake, your performance,
    if you insist on calling it that,
    leaves a lot to be desired.

    Perhaps that is what keeps you going –
    inserting, deleting, transposing, scribbling,
    rehearsing, trying out new lines.

    Are they sound? How do they sound?
    I’m taking soundings. These words are foundlings –
    sent out naked, defenceless, on trial.

    So yes, this is a rehearsal.
    No you don’t get your money back.
    Preview, press night, the run – all rehearsal.

    A new inflection, a look that comes
    because this audience got that joke,
    because I got the joke.

    Now, perhaps, I can tell it with conviction,
    get the timing right, know what it means,
    what I mean, as far as I know, so far.

    Try to improve every night or go stale –
    either way the final curtain falls
    and the corpse is hearsed.

Stuart Handysides has worked as a general practitioner and medical editor. He has published haiku in Presence magazine and short stories in anthologies. He has run the Ware Poets competition for the past three years.

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***

George Freek: Weak Wine

After Su Tung Po

    The weaker the wine,
    the more you can drink.
    An ugly wife is better
    than an empty house.

    One hundred years
    seems a long time,
    but eventually it ends.

    A rich corpse is no happier
    than a poor one.
    Every corpse is blind.

    Poetry is its own reward.
    Witty lines last a long time,
    when complemented
    by a clever rhyme.

    When I look at the abyss,
    of all things in this world,
    it’s wine and poetry
    that I will miss.

George Freek is a poet/playwright living in Illinois. His poetry has recently appeared in The Missing Slate; Off Course Literary Journal; Mud Season; The Chiron Review; The Tower Journal; and The Samizdat Literary Journal.

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